North Korea has reopened to foreign tourists, according to tour operators, five years after it closed its borders in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The country shut its frontiers in early 2020 to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and bolstered defences along its northern boundary with China to deter its own nationals from re-entering North Korea illegally.
Pyongyang has since reopened to some trade and official delegations and last year allowed Russian tourists to enter the country for the first time since the pandemic.
Now, tour operators - one with links in China and another based in Spain - said they had been notified that foreign travellers are able to visit the northeastern city of Rason in North Korea.
The special economic zone (SEZ) bordering China and Russia is open "effective from today", travel agency Young Pioneer Tours wrote on its website.
"According to our partners and contacts, the plan is to open immediately for both Chinese and all other foreign guests," the company said.
Tourism was limited before the Covid-19 outbreak, with tour companies saying there were around 5,000 western visitors each year.
Most travellers enter the country by plane or train from China.
The rest of North Korea remains closed to travellers, Beijing-based Koryo Tours said in a statement.
Despite Rason's reopening, "we do not (yet) have confirmed itineraries and prices for tourists", the firm said.
It added that it was not clear what kinds of tours that North Korea would permit and how many people they would allow to enter.
Rason became its first SEZ in 1991 and has been a testing ground for new economic policies.
It is home to the country's first legal marketplace and has a separate visa regime from the rest of the nation.
The vast majority of foreign visitors to North Korea before the pandemic were Chinese, though some US citizens also ventured there before Washington banned travel following the imprisonment and subsequent death of student Otto Warmbier in 2017.
People from South Korea, with which Pyongyang remains technically at war, are also barred from visiting without official permission.
China is a key ally and source of economic backing for North Korea's diplomatically isolated, United Nation-sanctioned government.
Reports in August suggested that Pyongyang was preparing to restart tourism in the northeastern city of Samjiyon, but that reopening has failed to materialise.
